And, all those feelings â€“ they could be ascribed to contemporary performance art. Thereâ€™s been a huge surge in performanceâ€™s popularity the past few years. This summer Tate Modern opened their Tanks as a dedicated space for performance and video installations, while in the museumâ€™s Turbine Hall Tino Seghal staged These associations , the first live art piece to be performed in the towering, empty space. In 2010, his This Progress, spiralled up the central rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum, and there were seventy-seven days of Marina Abramovicâ€™s mute, immobile presence in MoMAâ€™s atrium (The Artist Is Present). Here on this side of the pond, the Hayward Gallery in London staged Move: Choreographing You, while,. this year a whole floor of the Whitney Biennial was given over to performance, and in LA, thereâ€™s even a new gallery set up by hip young artists dedicated to, guess, yes, performance.

The Abramovic phenomenon in particular has come to exemplify the complicated alliance between performance, the museum, and institutional and commercial gallery spaces. For all its professed immediacy and the emphasis on the ephemeral â€œpresent,â€ MoMA did a good job of packaging up Â â€œthe momentâ€ and circulating it. There are photographs, official catalogue and the feature-length film. And, then there were the follow up shows later that year across both of Lisson Galleryâ€™s London spaces exhibiting documentation from earlier Abramovic performances. All of which seems to scream, precisely, that the artist is not present. However you choose to evaluate the work and despite any reservations you may have about the mythical status of the artist or the art institution as a sanctified space, whatâ€™s undeniable is The Artist Is Present celebrated the face-to-face one-on-one encounter. And, that exchange is at the heart of the performance revival. (read more)

Written by Caroline Picard

Caroline Picard is the Founding Editor for the Green Lantern Press. Recent work has been published or is forthcoming from Paper Monument, Rattapallax, MAKE Magazine and Diner Journal. She is the 2014 Curatorial Resident at La Box in Bourges, France. Upcoming curatorial projects include "Ghost Nature" (Gallery 400, January 2014 & La Box, March 2014), and "Animal Projections" (La Box, January 2014). www.cocopicard.com